I want to replace the exhaust on my 97 850 T5, but I've looked at the cost of a full system and I don't want to spend a ton of money. Has anybody just replaced the muffler with like a magnaflow or flowmaster kind of muffler? If so, what did you use and how did it sound?

 

850 exhausts come in two big sections - the front with the downpipe/cat and then the rear with the muffler. Not sure why you want to just replace the muffler - is this just for the sound or is part of the pipe wearing out?? You should be able to replace just the rear half with something aftermarket that may change the sound but if you decide to do just the muffler part itself you'd be looking at welding / cutting to make it fit right. Usually the performance parts are for the front half - ie a 3" downpipe into a free flowing cat to get more out of the turbo - but there I'd expect to pay in the 600-800 USD range for a quality part. Note that I just replaced the original exhaust this past year on my 95 850T wagon after it started leaking at the joint between the cat and rear muffler. 19 years / 200K miles - not too shabby for OEM. Kind of nice to hear the radio again.

 

For the most part, its for sound right now. Later on, I'll do a full exhaust but I'm not in a position to drop 600-800 on an exhaust. Oh the problems with being a teenager.

 

been there... (ok about 40 years ago - but hey, I put a 4:1 header and an Ansa exhaust on a 73 BMW 2002 to get a nice tone myself) - Check out to see what an aftermarket set up sounds like. Note the turbo does effectively mute the engine so going to a Magnaflow muffler etc won't really be as loud as a non-turbo.